The American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law, the ABA Section on International Law, the ABA Section of Antitrust Law, and the U.S. Council for International Business are sponsors of a conference on Administrative Law of the European Union. The conference wil be held on August 7, 2008 at Cardozo Law School, 55 Fifth Avenue, in New York City.

The European Union has become the locus of an extraordinary range of activities that the academic and professional community in the United States associates with the field of administrative law. This range of decisional activity is of special interest because no other regulatory regime outside the U.S. affects American businesses and individuals as regularly and intensively as the European Union and no other regulatory regime constitutes as steady a frame of reference for comparison with American administrative law processes. This conference will present the results of, and discussion on, an extensive study of E.U. administrative law conducted by a large team of experts put together by the Section, led by renowned E.U. law expert Professor George Bermann of Columbia University School of Law.

The conference will provide practical advice on E.U. administrative law and regulatory practice and how to effectively participate in or influence E.U. decision making. The panelists are experts in the administrative processes of both the U.S. and the E.U., including practitioners and government officials; many of them participated in the preparation of an ABA Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section recently-completed study of E.U. administrative law.

The panels will cover many matters of importance to those who interact with the E.U., including:

How to participate in the EU process for developing the equivalent of U.S. laws and regulations;

The emergence and role of administrative agencies in the E.U.;

How to use the substantial opportunities the E.U. provides for representing an interest in its adjudicatory system;

The relationship between the member states, who have considerable authority for judicial enforcement even when E.U. law and rights or claims may be at issue, and the E.U.;

The influence on statutory interpretation of multiple, authoritative language texts;

Who plays an oversight role in the E.U. comparable to that played by the Office of Management and Budget in the U.S. and how to effectively influence that oversight;

The effect of the Treaty of Lisbon, signed in December 2007, on E.U. law; and

Valuable sources of information, including websites with a wealth of information.